


Felix Redux

by skepwith



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant up to S3, M/M, now so very AU, sinister military is sinister, snarky clones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 06:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3317867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skepwith/pseuds/skepwith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I really wanted a Felix clone, so I wrote one. Also included: a Helena road trip, Paul Dierden explained, a Felix-clone sass-off, a smidge of Sarah, and a dash of Cosima. Written between Seasons 2 and 3.</p><p> </p><p>Her brother-sister’s clone was watching her from the next seat. “You’ve seen me before.”</p><p>His hands were grasping the steering wheel lightly, but she could see the strength in them and the calluses on the knuckles. She tried to imagine them holding a paintbrush. “No. I don’t know you.”</p><p>“But you recognized my face.” He glanced at her again. The road was straight and empty, which gave him a lot of time to watch her expression.</p><p>“Yes,” she said, slouching down in her seat. “You are another sheep.”</p><p>“A sheep.”</p><p>“Baaaaa.”</p><p>That shut him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

“She’s my sister, Paul.”

“Sarah, from what Siobhan said, you’re better off without—”

“Mrs. S doesn’t know her like me!” On the other end of the phone, he heard her hand slam into some defenceless piece of furniture. “She’s not—she’s not _crazy_ , yeah? Those religious nut jobs did a number on her, but it’s not her fault. She’s all right when she’s with me. I can keep her— I can make her safe.”

“Sarah—”

“She’s my _twin sister_ , Paul. She’s like me. I’m getting her back.”

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, exhaling sharply through his nose. He knew he’d lost. He’d lost as soon as he’d answered the phone. “All right. Just don’t...do anything. Let me take care of it.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Paul.” He could hear the relief in her voice, in the slow release of breath. It made his heart lift. He told his heart to stop being such a sap, but it didn’t listen.

He put on a jacket, scooped his keys out of the dish, and went for a walk. The local convenience store was a fluorescent-and-linoleum beacon in the dark, promising lottery tickets and all the newspapers nobody wanted to read anymore. He picked up some milk, eggs, and a burner phone, and was rung up incuriously by the hijab-wearing cashier. On the way back to the condo, he pulled out the new phone and dialled a number.

“Yes,” said a voice on the other end of the line.

“It’s me.”

A pause. “What do you need?”

“A favour.”

***

The army truck rattled along the road and Helena’s head rattled with it, lolling against the wall behind her. She was sitting on a bench, her hands and feet cuffed and a guard on either side. Two more guard dogs were in the front of the truck, where she couldn’t see them, but she could hear them yapping on the crackling walkie-talkie.

They were passing through the barrier now: she heard the soldiers in the little huts, probably checking papers, and the gates in the electrified fence swinging open. She’d made three escape attempts, each time getting a little farther from the army village in spite of the snow and the cold—it was as cold here as back home, maybe colder—so now they were moving her somewhere new, somewhere more secure. This was good luck. She smiled secretly to herself. Four was not very many at all.

The soldier on her right stared straight ahead, one hand resting on his rifle. The other one kept giving her quick, sharp glances. He was sweating nervously; she could smell it. He must have heard about Dr. Ferber. Dr. “Call-me-Julian.” She frowned. She had not liked Dr. Ferber. He had smiled too wide, like a wolf, and said, “I’d like for us to be friends, Helena.” He gave her a chocolate bar, which she ate immediately. The sisters used to say, _The devil always takes back his gifts_.

Dr. Ferber made notes on a clipboard that said “Defense Research and Develpment Centre” while he asked her question after question in his careful English voice. Some of the other doctors had the same kind of accent, but most of them sounded like the soldiers with the little red-leaf flags on their uniforms, or the ones with no flags who sounded like American movies. Right away they had given her many tests, and then they had taken her baby away from her and put it into someone else. It was “safer,” they said. If she was good, they would bring her baby back to her after it was born. _Black souls wear white shirts._ That was something else the sisters used to say.

Dr. Ferber was a psychologist. “I’m a psychologist, Helena,” he said, “but don’t let that scare you!” Then he laughed like he’d just told a joke. She didn’t join in. To his questions she responded with silence, or with meaningless fragments of stories, but he never got angry, just clicked his slim, golden pen and made another note. Once he brought her chocolate-covered donuts with cream inside. Those were good.

One day the soldier at the door was called away for a moment by his urgently squawking walkie-talkie, and she leaped across the table and pierced Dr. Ferber-call-me-Julian’s carotid artery with his golden pen. She got as far as the fence that time. Six soldiers brought her back with their rifles carefully trained on her, and there had been a new doctor. She didn’t miss Dr. Ferber, but she missed the donuts.

She opened her eyes as the truck slowed and came to a halt. The soldiers spoke back and forth on their walkie-talkies: there was another army truck in the road, some kind of checkpoint. Unscheduled. Quietly, she slid her feet underneath her. _Yap, yap_ , went the walkie-talkie. Muffled voices, a thump. Silence. Her guard dogs pointed their rifles at the back door and waited, tense. The moment the handle turned, she was pulling herself up by a crossbar and kicking the M16 out of the nearest guard’s hands with her chained-together feet. She dodged his clumsy recovery as she landed, slipping the chain of her wrist cuffs over his head. She tightened it as they both fell, pulling his body between her and the door to shield her from fire.

But there were no bullets. There was no sound at all, except for the gurgling of her asphyxiating soldier. When he was dead, she looked up to see the newcomer had shot the other guard neatly between the eyes. He was standing in the door now, in a uniform identical to her guards', holstering his silencer-tipped pistol. “Which one has the keys?” he asked her.

She pointed to the soldier he’d shot, unable to speak. It was her _brat-sestra_ , Felix.

  
  


Of course it wasn’t really him. He didn’t sound like him, or walk like him. His hair was soldier-short and his eyebrows were too thick. He was another copy, a clone. For the first time she understood how odd it must be for people who knew one of her sisters to meet another, to see a face so strange and so familiar at once. She stared at him rudely while he unlocked her cuffs.

They dragged the bodies of the two soldiers from the front into the back of the truck with the others and parked it behind a snowy hillock of yellow grass. Not-Felix had brought another, similar, truck, which was stopped sideways across the road. As they both climbed in, he said, “I’ve got a car twenty clicks down the road. They won’t expect you at the transfer point for approximately three hours, so that should give us enough time to get to Calgary, where I've got a private flight lined up.” He looked at her to make sure she understood, but all she could do was duck her head and snicker. This serious soldier-Felix was hilarious! He narrowed his eyes at her in a way that was almost familiar and put the truck into gear without a word.

The car waiting for them was a little Honda, like the motorcycle. Not-Felix popped the trunk at once and started changing into new clothes: dark trousers, a crisp white shirt, a scratchy suit-jacket with patches on the elbows. He must have been freezing—his skin was coming up in gooseflesh—but he didn’t shiver or complain. He handed her a dark woolen cap (“Here, cover your hair”) and a red sweatshirt with writing on it, which she put on over the army clothes they’d given her at the base. He also put on a pair of glasses that he pulled out of the car's glove compartment. They had thin, expensive frames, like a doctor would wear. He hadn’t needed them to shoot the soldiers, so they must be part of his disguise.

Inside, the car was navy blue and smelled like old cigarettes. While they sat waiting for the engine to warm up, she puzzled out the foreign letters on her sweatshirt. University of something. “University of A-la-ba-ma. Alabama.” She liked that. It reminded her of Ali Baba, who’d tricked the forty thieves. Sister Irina had read them the story twice, before Sister Olga threw it away because God didn’t like it. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the golden treasure-cave from the illustrations. “We are in Alabama?” she asked.

Not-Felix looked at her from behind his doctor-glasses. His face was entirely still except for one eyebrow, which had escaped his control and was making its way slowly up his forehead. “Not even close,” he said.

The engine warm, they pulled out onto the highway. There was nothing around them but long, snowy fields and a line of big blue mountains on the horizon. She turned on the radio and began rolling the dial through static and bursts of music. Not-Felix turned it off. Her hand was halfway to the dial again when he stopped it with an iron grip and said, “Turn it on again and you’re walking to Calgary.”

She rifled through the glove compartment instead, but there was nothing except some papers, the glasses-case, and a pencil stub, which she pocketed. They passed a sign that said “Elk Crossing” above a silhouette of a magnificently antlered deer, but the only animals she could see were groups of shaggy cows. She breathed on the window until it was foggy and began to draw on it with a finger.

“You haven’t asked who sent me.” His voice was quiet and even, without any of Felix's entertaining leaps and dives.

She finished the first stick figure and began drawing a second. “I know who sent you. My _sestra_ , Sarah.”

“Your sister. Is she like you?”

“Yes. We are twins.” A third, smaller stick figure joined the first two. She hesitated, then drew another full-sized figure, followed by two more. Finished, she sat back and admired her family portrait: four sisters, a niece, and a brother-sister. What riches!

Her brother-sister’s clone was watching her from the next seat. “You’ve seen me before.”

His hands were grasping the steering wheel lightly, but she could see the strength in them and the calluses on the knuckles. She tried to imagine them holding a paintbrush. “No. I don’t know you.”

“But you recognized my face.” He glanced at her again. The road was straight and empty, which gave him a lot of time to watch her expression.

“Yes,” she said, slouching down in her seat. “You are another sheep.”

“A sheep.”

“Baaaaa.”

That shut him up. She flipped down the visor in front of her and found a mirror on the underside. Her dark roots were really showing. Maybe she would let them grow out and have brown hair again, like Sarah.

“Your name is Helena, is that right?”

She flipped the mirror closed. “You already know this.”

“True, but we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Leon.”

That meant lion. Which fit, except it was too big: he was a leopard, maybe, or one of the black ones—a panther. Definitely a big cat, though. The thought made her smile. “Mrrrooww!” she said, and watched with amusement as his eyebrow did its dance again.

“Maybe I should call you Old MacDonald.”

Was that a joke? It wasn’t very funny.

“What was his name?” he asked. “The other...sheep.”

Felix was no sheep—he was a cat too. An alley cat. When she got back, she would call him that and watch him bristle. “You are taking me to my _sestra_?”

“I’m taking you to Vancouver. It’s relatively big, a port city. You should be able to get wherever you need to go from there.”

She nodded. A port meant cargo ships, which meant freight trains. She would ride them back to the city, make sure Sarah and Kira had stayed safe in her absence. Then maybe her sisters could help her find out who had her baby and get it back.

There were levers under her seat which moved it forwards and backwards and up and down. She tried out all possible combinations while Leon drove and said nothing. When that became boring, she used her pencil to draw sisters all over the papers in the glove compartment. She added a few brother-sisters in for good measure.

After a while the road became busier and started to climb into the foothills. “We are going to the mountains?” she asked.

“We’re going to fly over them. There's another mountain range past this one, and Vancouver's on the other side of that.”

That was a lot of mountains. “This country has much distance,” she said.

“Much, much distance,” he agreed, with what might almost have been a smile. She suspected he was laughing at her. “We'll go through Calgary first,” he said. “The guy whose plane we're taking has an airfield thirty minutes outside the city.”

“We are stealing plane?”

“What? No. The owner is a...business associate. It's one of his regular flights; we're just hitching a ride. You know, hitchhiking?”

“Yes, I know this,” she said, demonstrating with a thumb.

The road was even busier now, with more and more exits and low buildings whipping by on either side. Soon they were surrounded by wide streets, car lots, and fast food restaurants with bright plastic signs. The snow was mostly grey.

“You hungry?” Leon asked.

“Yes,” she said, because only fools turned down a chance to eat.

They pulled into a drive-through, and she ordered one of everything on the board. Both of Leon’s eyebrows went up at that, but he paid without saying a word. She arranged the white bags on the dashboard and started eating as they pulled back onto the freeway. Now the car smelled of French fries instead of cigarettes, which was a big improvement. Leon had a hamburger and a soft drink, but he let her finish his fries. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

By the time she was slurping at the bottom of her milkshake, the city was receding behind them. Pieces of greasy paper and ketchup-stained napkins lay crumpled all around her. She poked at them to make sure she hadn't missed any bits of food.

Leon pulled off the freeway and onto a smaller road with snow-covered trees close on either side. “Are you going to be okay in Vancouver on your own?” he said. “I can give you some cash for a bus ticket, but I wouldn’t advise trying to cross the border—it’s pretty tight these days.”

“No, I will ride on the train.” He looked skeptical, so she explained, “I can jump.” She mimed hopping onto a train car by making two fingers into small, nimble legs. Hop, hop, onto the dashboard.

“Have you done that before?”

“Many times,” she said loftily.

“Okay, then.”

Maybe she’d been too hasty. “The train, it goes to Toronto, yes?”

“Yes, lots of freight heading cross-country.”

“Okay then.” They fell back into their accustomed silence as Leon turned them onto an even smaller road. This one was paved with loose gravel, which pinged on the undercarriage. She watched him shift the gearstick and coax the little car further uphill. He wasn't so bad, as sheep went, even if he wasn't her brother. He had been pretty helpfull, all in all.

“I will tell Felix,” she said after a while. “When I am there again.”

“Who?”

“Your _brat_ , your brother. I will tell him about you, and I will say that you are a good cat.”

The car skidded to a halt on the ragged verge, scattering gravel into the snow. Leon slammed it into park and whipped around to face her.

“ _He’s alive?”_

 


	2. Unexpendable

An occupied room has a different feeling to it than one that's empty. Paul couldn't have described the feeling, but he'd learned to recognize it a long time ago. He stepped through his front door as if nothing were wrong, turning to close it behind him and flicking on the light switch. When the lights came up he had his Glock out and trained on the slim figure leaning against the wall.

His heart skipped a beat before his brain had realized who it was. “Leon,” he said. The name was a scratchy whisper.

Leon flicked his eyes to the blinds hanging open over the windows; behind them the glass showed Paul's reflection against a dark background. He holstered his gun and went to shut them. When they were closed, Leon tapped his ear with a raised eyebrow.

“We're clean,” said Paul. “I did a sweep this morning.”

“Good,” said Leon, stepping into the room. He was dressed in ordinary, forgettable clothes: dark pants, a button-down shirt, a black jacket. Paul watched him do a survey of the condo, probably noting all the things he'd missed in the dark. He looked older than Paul remembered, though it had only been—what?—three years.

“Nice place.”

“It belongs to Dyad Corporation. I'm acting as a sort of liaison for them at the moment.”

Leon picked up a framed photograph and examined the couple smiling out of it. He was wearing gloves, of course—the man couldn't have been sloppy if he'd tried. “Is this Sarah?” he asked.

“No, it's Beth,” said Paul, feeling the usual twinge of guilt. “She's dead.” He'd kept the photo on display as a kind of penance: Paul Dierden's hair shirt. “She was from the same line as Helena. Leda—that's what they call them.”

“Leda. Of course,” said Leon dryly, setting the picture down exactly where he'd picked it up from. “Your hungry friend seemed to think Sarah sent me.”

“Yeah. It was Sarah who asked me to get her out,” Paul admitted. “We have a, uh, short but complicated history.”

Leon narrowed his eyes at him for a moment, then turned his attention to a blue glass jar some Dyad flunky had probably ordered from Pottery Barn. “The extraction was successful, by the way,” he said. “Went without a hitch.”

“I knew it would.”

Leon said nothing. There was a time when the two of them had been able to communicate with just a glance—it was something they'd learned in the field, and one of the reasons they were so often partnered on missions. Their psychic brainwave link, they used to call it jokingly. But now Paul was getting nothing at all. Leon had gone radio silent.

He put the jar down and turned to face Paul across the small living room. “Why didn't you tell me about him?” Leon's voice was hard, wary. His eyes bored into Paul's.

Paul sank into the easy chair and rubbed his face with his hands. “Because I knew you wouldn't stay away,” he said. “It's not safe for you here. It's only a matter of time before someone spots you.”

Leon's lips pressed together, but he didn't disagree. Instead he sat down on the couch opposite and said, “I need to see him.”

“I've been keeping an eye on him. He's safe, I promise you.”

The other man's expression didn't change. “It's not that I don't believe you, Paul. But I have to confirm it for myself.”

Paul shook his head, wanting to argue and knowing there was no point. Leon had a contrary streak a mile wide—not unlike Felix, really. The thought made him smile ruefully. “He's so different from you,” he said. “You have no idea. It really threw me for a loop at first.” He'd hated Felix at the beginning, for being just like Leon and yet so completely _wrong_ in every way. “He's an  artist.”

Leon's eyebrows went up at that, and he looked so dismayed, Paul had to laugh. Leon blinked, and then his mouth twitched up at the corners as he said, “So basically, you're saying he's an asshole.”

Paul grinned and shook his head. “You'll find out for yourself.”

Leon leaned back on the couch and actually smiled. “It's good to see you, Paul.”

“Yeah, you too. You look...good.” It wasn't completely true: he'd lost weight, and his face looked thinner, bonier—but none of that mattered. He was still Leon, and he was alive. “You know, I tried not to think about where you were and how you were doing, but I worried about it all the same. I worried a lot.”

“I can take care of myself, Paul.”

“Yeah, I know you can. But I missed you.”

Leon rose and went to his chair. Slowly, he ran one gloved finger along Paul's jaw, tilting his head up and watching his reaction almost curiously. Paul held his breath. His heartbeat seemed to punch him repeatedly in the chest.

Placing a hand on either side of his face, Leon bent down and brought their lips together. Paul opened his mouth with an undignified noise. His hands reached out and grabbed of their own volition, pulling Leon down on top of him. Soon they were kissing hungrily, too desperate to keep track of knees and elbows, as awkward as if they'd never done this before.

When they broke apart to catch their breath, Paul reached for Leon's hand. He pulled off the glove, one finger at a time. When Leon's hand was bare, he planted a kiss on his palm, then licked his way up his first finger and sucked on it gently, to the sound of Leon's rough breaths. He had a sudden flash of Rachel's fingers pushing into his mouth—God, his sex life was weird—but it was quickly gone. Leon yanked off his other glove and shoved both hands into Paul's hair, bringing their mouths together again. He tightened his grip, and Paul groaned in spite of himself.

The next time they parted, Leon slithered out of his lap and onto his knees on the carpet. He tore open Paul's pants, scrabbling with belt and zipper. As Leon's hand and lips closed around him, the back of Paul's head hit the chair's upholstery and he was doubly thankful there were no bugs in the apartment.

They both came embarrasingly quickly, but afterwards, when they'd moved to the bedroom, they took their time undressing each other, tracing old and new scars with their fingertips. Leon eased him onto the bed and kissed down his sternum while Paul stroked the short hairs on the back of his neck. They were lazy at first...until they weren't. “I want to— Do you have—?” muttered Leon urgently. Paul fumbled in a drawer until he found condoms and a small bottle of lube.

As he took them, Leon hesitated. “You want to?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Paul stretched back against the pillows and bent up his knee. Leon's eyes went dark—darker than usual—and he caught his lower lip between his teeth. God, he'd missed Leon's lips. “Just take it slow, all right?” Paul said huskily. “I haven't done this in three years.”

Leon smiled then, a real smile, surprisingly sweet. “That's...oddly touching,” he said.

  
  


Later, Paul lay with Leon's dark head tucked under his chin, their limbs tangled together. His body was all for going straight to sleep, but he wouldn't let it. Leon might not be here when he woke up.

“Have you been...okay?” he asked. His lazy, raspy voice belied the seriousness of the question.

“Mm,” said Leon uninformatively. “Yeah, fine.” He rubbed his face against Paul's skin, his light stubble pleasantly scratchy. “Been in South America. Still got some connections down there. _Narcotraficantes_ , mostly; some government. I do jobs for 'em now and then.”

“Wetwork?” asked Paul tersely.

“As little as I can help.”

Paul tightened his arms around Leon protectively. An army shrink had once told him he had a saviour complex. At the time, he had dismissed it as the usual psychobabble bullshit, but lately he was starting to wonder.

When they were first assigned together, his commanding officer had made Paul's role clear: he was to get Leon into position and let him do his thing. What his CO didn't have to say was that, of the two of them, Leon was the greater asset—Paul was expendable; Leon was not.

They were on their third mission when Paul made a bad mistake. It was in a dacha located an hour outside St. Petersburg and owned by a Russian mafia man named Markov. He was no better or worse than any of his fellow criminals, but he had refused to play ball with their people, which made him a problem. Enter Paul and Leon, problem-solvers.

Paul got himself into Markov's security team on the say-so of a _Bratva_ man their guys had flipped. Thirteen days later, Leon took out Markov with his usual finesse, slipping in and out of the dacha in the time it took Markov's goons to polish off a bottle of vodka. Paul had meant to disappear in the confusion after the body was found, as per their usual MO, but Markov's son Sasha prevented his exit by pushing him up against the dacha's garish wallpaper with the barrel of a Beretta.

“It was you, you piece of shit!” he snarled, while the rest of the security team dithered behind him.

“Sasha—” Paul kept his voice calm in spite of the gun digging into the side of his face.

“You are newest man! Two weeks ago you come, and now my father is dead! Is fucking coincidence? No!”

“Sasha, I was playing cards with the boys when it happened. They all saw me. Ask them!”

The barrel ground into his jaw. “You think I am fucking stupid?” said Sasha in a low, dangerous voice. “You know security codes. You let someone in.”

“No, I—”

An alarm went off and the lights cut out simultaneously. Sasha swore in Russian and shouted orders at his men. Four of them left to check the dacha's perimeter, while two stayed with Markov, nervously fingering their Kalashnikovs. The emergency lights had kicked in, and by their greenish glow Paul watched as first one guard and then the other crumpled to the ground with a hole in his forehead. Sasha turned, pointing his Beretta wildly, and Paul took him down with a quick blow to the throat.

Leon appeared at his elbow like a fucking ninja, still holding his rifle. “Charlie route,” he said over the braying of the alarm. That meant through the storage basement and out via the game run. Paul nodded. They moved quickly and silently, well-practiced at this kind of manoeuvre. Leon had cut the electricity to the perimeter fence, and it didn't take them long to get through it and beyond the dacha's grounds.

They found themselves in a birch forest. The ghostly white tree trunks were just visible against the darkness. They'd chosen a new moon: good for hiding, not so good for figuring out where the hell you were. They were at least ten clicks from their planned exit point, which meant they had to navigate their way back to familiar territory without being noticed. Paul's face was already numb from the cold even though it was fucking April. He wished he'd let his beard grow out. That was what he got for being vain.

Leon was checking the compass on his watch, keeping the light low enough not to ruin their night vision. “You shouldn't have come back for me,” said Paul. “It was a big risk.”

Leon didn't even look up. “Right. Like you didn't come back for me in Bogotá.”

“That's different. I'm replaceable. There's only one of you.”

Leon looked up, surprised, and then he started laughing. He laughed so hard he had to lean against a tree. Paul watched him in bewilderment. It wasn't until much later that he would get the joke—after Leon had explained it all, after things had gone very, very wrong and Leon had needed his help to disappear.

They made it to the rendezvous just before dawn, suffering from first-degree frostbite and exhaustion. Later, Paul would remember it as the night Leon became something more than a brother-in-arms. The man had come back for him: it was as simple as that. Paul would have done anything at all for him after that, even betray his country.

Now Leon slid his fingers idly down Paul's arm to where his hand lay spread against Leon's chest. “You're still in the forces,” he said. Phrasing questions as statements was an interrogation technique. Paul wondered if Leon even noticed he was doing it anymore.

“Actually, I quit,” he said. Leon looked up at that. “After what they did to you, and the others, I couldn't anymore. It left a bad taste in my mouth. So I handed in my resignation and went private.”

“How did that go?” Leon rolled over and propped himself on Paul's chest, watching him closely. Paul stroked his back with both hands, wishing he could smooth away the memories as easily.

“It was a shitshow,” he sighed. “They had all the same crazy but with none of the rules. When the shit hit the fan in Afghanistan, I didn't get out of the way fast enough. It was a stupid mistake.” Thinking about it, he had to make an effort not to grind his teeth.

“I figured after that I'd be lucky to wind up mopping floors for a living, but Special Forces stepped in before there was even an investigation. They had a job for me. I wasn't exactly in a position to refuse.”

“What was the job?”

“Dyad. I applied for a security position, and after I was hired my handlers fed them the dirt on Afghanistan. They ate it up. I was fast-tracked for a 'special position,' pretending to be Beth's boyfriend and reporting back to them about her. I hated it. Dyad said it was part of some big, important project. I probably should have figured it out, given what I knew, but...” He felt his mouth twist in disgust, as much at himself as at them. “I guess I wanted to stay ignorant.”

“Do you think she knew?” Leon asked. Paul wondered if he empathized with Beth, clone to clone.

“Yeah, she figured it out.” He closed his eyes. “She killed herself not long after. Jumped in front of a train.”

“Jesus.”

“I didn't even find out till later. Sarah took her place, and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't figure out she wasn't Beth for, well, too long.”

“Huh. That's ballsy.”

Paul chuckled. “That's Sarah for you. That girl's got more cojones than a plate of prairie oysters.”

He might have sounded a little awestruck; Leon's lips thinned slightly. Paul ran a hand down his spine as if he were smoothing his fur back into place. “We were together for a while, but we're not anymore.”

“Mm,” said Leon in tones that suggested he might be willing to be mollified.

“Since I'm already neck-deep in this thing, I've been trying to help her where I can—and the others, too. I keep telling myself I can do more good from the inside. Maybe I'm kidding myself.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, staying in contact with Sarah helps me keep tabs on Felix too.”

Leon's attention sharpened. “How's that?”

“Didn't you know? They grew up together. He's her foster-brother.”

“That's quite a coincidence,” said Leon, raising an eyebrow.

Paul said dryly, “Not if you know their foster-mother, it isn't.”

Leon rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His face wore what Paul thought of as his planning look.

“When will you go see him?” Paul asked quietly.

“The sooner the better.”


	3. Artistic Differences

The address Paul had provided was on a graffiti-splattered street that seemed to revel in its own seediness. Leon watched the building—a pre-war industrial brownstone of the type realtors salivated over—for several hours and from several different vantage points before he was satisfied it wasn't under surveillance.

The dim, narrow stairway led up to a corridor tepidly illuminated by a window which had been painted shut, rendering it unuseable except as a last resort. He rapped his gloved knuckles against the oversized metal door and waited.

The door slid open, and he was confronted with a face that—Jesus, was that _makeup_?

The other man's improbably lined eyes widened as they took him in. “No,” he said decisively. “Absolutely not.” And with that pronouncement, he heaved the door shut in Leon's face.

Leon repeated his knock. “Felix,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“Go away!” said the voice on the other side of the door, sounding aggrieved. “I am not doing this, understand? This is a level of insanity I absolutely do _not_ need in my life!” His accent was English and, for want of better a better term, really gay. It set Leon's teeth on edge.

“Felix, open the door.”

Leon waited out a long pause, during which he assumed Felix's curiosity was wrestling with his self-preservation, before the door slid reluctantly open. Felix pursed his unnaturally shiny lips (Was that lipstick? Lip gloss? What was the difference?) and looked him up and down with disapproval. “My hair looks terrible like that,” he said, stepping aside grudgingly to let him in.

Leon quickly concluded that Felix was supplementing what income, if any, he made as an artist with some lucrative side gig. This was no artist's hovel: this was the sort of place people who lived in artists' hovels dreamed about. It was huge, and every inch seemed to be covered in what presumably in some circles was called art. Leon had never pretended to have much of an aesthetic sensibility, but this unrelenting clamour of colour and line made him want to lie down in a dark room with something over his eyes. On either end were two big windows that wouldn't have looked out of place in a church; both were useless as exits, as they weren't made to be opened, but a smaller, normal-sized door led out to the fire escape.

Leon withdrew an RF detector from his pocket and began sweeping for bugs in all the most likely places. Felix, who had flounced over to a baby-blue satin sofa and sat down with his legs crossed, watched him suspiciously. When Leon had satisfied himself the place was clean, he put away the sniffer and began to examine some of the canvases that were propped up on easels and leaning against the walls. The figures on them were at least recognizable as such—mostly what he took to be Leda clones and, for some reason, a large naked man using a football to spare the viewer the sight of his genitals—but they were surrounded by inexplicable objects and implausible colours. Leon stared, repelled and mystified. “Why all the penises?”

On the couch, Felix sniffed and crossed his arms. “It's a motif.”

Leon looked at him and then back at the paintings. “Looks like a dick to me.”

Felix rolled his eyes.

“Did you do all of this...” Leon gestured ineloquently at their surroundings, “...yourself?” He couldn't even draw a credible stick figure; he made Helena look like Picasso.

“No,” said Felix flatly, “I got it at Costco.” He picked an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve and scattered it with an ostentatious flick of his fingers, no doubt wishing he could do the same with Leon. God, he was so... _gay_. He wouldn't have survived a week at the Academy.

“The Academy” was what they'd called it, a laughable title for a school with only eighteen students, all identical. Not that they'd seen themselves as identical: even in uniforms and regulation haircuts, they each had their scars and idiosyncrasies, their markers of difference. Nothing approaching Felix's brand of artistic flamboyance, though. Some of them might have been homosexual—in fact, at least half of them were, a statistical anomaly that Leon was only able to understand and relish much later—but effeminate? Never. They were soldiers (Spartan warriors was the favoured comparison), continually pitted against one another for that rarest prize, approval. Leon could still remember the warmth he'd felt as a child whenever Dr. Johnson clasped her hands together on her desk and said those magic words, “We're very pleased with your progress, Leon.”

It never occurred to any of them that most schools don't train their students to assemble a sniper rifle blindfolded in sub-zero temperatures, or force them to run until they collapse. How could it, when the Academy was all they knew?

Well, not quite all, at least in Leon's case. It was Mr. Tremblay, the English teacher, who expanded Leon's world incalculably one afternoon when he found him with his nose buried in the pages of _The Count of Monte Cristo_. “Did you know a lot of that book was based on Dumas' father's real life?”

Leon looked up, startled. He'd been too absorbed to notice the rest of the class had already tramped out of the classroom and left him on his own. Students never lingered in this class any longer than was absolutely necessary. The other teachers didn't bother to hide how little they thought of Mr. Tremblay's subject, which lacked any practical military application, and most of the boys had adopted their attitude. Tremblay was leaning against the desk next to Leon's, smiling like he'd just found hidden treasure.

“Really?” said Leon. “That's hard to believe.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Tremblay. “Often the most unbelievable parts of novels turn out to be based on real events. Truth is stranger than fiction, as they say.”

Leon hadn't known they said anything of the kind, but if Mr. Tremblay said it, he was willing to believe it. In short order the man had loaded him down with the first three volumes of Patrick O'Brian's nautical adventure series, all well-thumbed and cracked at the spines. Over the following months he doled out the other seventeen volumes in generous portions, on the condition that Leon share his opinions of them upon their return.

This became something of a routine for the two of them, and as Leon got older Mr. Tremblay introduced him to Melville and Kafka and Borges. Tremblay was the only person Leon ever let inside the space in his head that he'd carved out for himself, the one that was his alone. He kept it well hidden from everyone else, even the cooly benign Dr. Johnson. The adults, he'd discovered, had their own agendas that didn't necessarily align with his well-being, while the other students couldn't be trusted in a world where showing difference, like showing weakness, was asking to be bullied.

Had Felix been bullied? It seemed likely. But far from teaching him to adopt an appearance of conformity, it seemed to have pushed him to go to greater lengths to stand out. Leon could appreciate the chutzpah, if not the results. Right now Felix was wearing a partially see-through black shirt that sparkled when he moved and pants so tight they might have been sprayed on. Leon was pretty sure his hair had some kind of product in it, since his own had never possessed such gravity-defying properties.

He took a seat across from the blue couch yet still within view of the door, and removed his gloves in the hope of appearing less sinister. “My name is Leon,” he said. Felix said nothing, but his posture spoke volumes: crossed arms, crossed legs, pursed lips, narrowed eyes. Leon might have been something he'd pulled out of a drain. “You must have questions,” Leon said.

Felix's leg, which had been swinging restlessly from the knee like a cat's twitching tail, went still. “Are you with Dyad?” he asked.

“No. I—we—were created by the military.”

“The military! Why? What for?”

“They designed two lines of soldiers, Castor and Pollux.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “More Greek mythology, I take it. They really had a hard-on for that stuff, didn't they? So, go on—who's Castor and Pollux when they're at home?”

“The sons of Leda and Zeus—”

“Yeah, them I've heard of.”

“—or Leda and Tyndareus, depending on who you ask. They're best known as the stars that make up the constellation Gemini.”

“So, twins. This is all feeling horribly familiar. But...the _sons_ of Leda? Are you sure?”

“My guess is their genomes are derived in some way from the Leda clones. A later generation, maybe.”

Felix took a moment to absorb this, his glossy lips parted and his eyes staring unfocused at the wall. He shook his head and returned to the debriefing. “Why two different clone lines? Why not just make more Castors or whatever?”

“The Castors were intended to be foot soldiers: obedient, unimaginative, tenacious. The Polluxes—that's us—were made for special assignments.”

“ 'Special'?” Leon could hear the quotation marks.

“Clandestine. Illegal. Unethical. Just what you think.”

“So, like...” Felix's mouth hung open in disbelief. “... _Clone ninjas?_ ”

“I wouldn't use those words, but if you like, yes.”

“Oh my God!” Felix burst into laughter, rocking forward over his knees and then falling back against the couch, arms wide. Leon watched him dispassionately until he stopped gasping and began dabbing his eyes with the sides of his fingers. “Oh God,” sighed Felix at last. The mirth faded from his face. “Oh, God.” He looked at Leon, his eyes wide. “Do you, like, _kill_ people?”

“Yes.”

Felix covered his mouth with a hand. “That's horrible.”

“The Polluxes were given characteristics the Castors lacked. They were meant to operate independently, so they had to be able to think on their feet. They tended to be less obedient, but more...innovative.”

“How many? How many are there?”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“As far as I know, counting you and me—two.”

Felix stared.

Leon said nothing.

“I need a drink,” said Felix.

  


The whiskey Felix produced from a cupboard was cheap but effective. Leon felt it burn all the way along its journey to his stomach. Felix emptied his tumbler, shuddered, and poured himself another. When he'd steeled himself sufficiently, he said, “What happened to the others? There were more, weren't there?”

Leon swallowed another mouthful of whiskey. “After a few years in the field, they became unstable.”

“Unstable?”

“HQ started getting disturbing reports.” Leon hesitated. The sun had passed its meridian and was now shining through the big south-facing window in full force, washing nearly the whole loft in golden light. A scattering of dust motes circled idly over a jar full of paintbrushes. He forced himself to continue. “They—we—were trained to be killers. And most of the Polluxes worked alone, with minimal on-the-ground oversight. There had to be plausible deniability, you see.

“Reports started coming in of operatives going beyond their mission parameters, not just taking out assigned targets but others too. Some of them seemed to be suffering from God complexes—extreme narcissism, lack of empathy. Not surprising, really, when you think about it. Others seemed to find enjoyment in killing, to the point where they were unwilling or unable to stop. There wasn't one Pollux who didn't exhibit signs of sociopathy.”

Leon drank again, relishing the burn. Sometimes feeling anything was a blessing. Across from him, Felix watched speechlessly, his hands tight around his glass.

“In the end, the brass decided to retire the whole line. They said there was a flaw in the design.”

“'Retire'?” said Felix. “Is that a charming military euphemism for 'kill'?”

“No, at first they tried to bring them back to HQ, offering them vaguely defined 'research positions'.”

“Let me guess: Lab Rat.”

Disinclined to disagree with this assessment, Leon stared into his whiskey. “The initial retrieval missions ended very messily. Rather than waste more manpower trying to bring the Polluxes in, they decided to have them liquidated instead. Executed,” he clarified. “Assassinated.”

“Got it.”

They both took a drink this time, after which Felix topped up their glasses. Screwing the flimsy cap back on the bottle, he asked, “So, did they? Execute them.”

“They were very clever about it. If you need to kill a highly trained assassin, who better to use than another highly trained assassin?”

Felix went very still on the couch. Smart boy—he'd figured it out.

“They approached me because, they said, I was the most stable. Maybe I was just the most loyal. I don't know. They showed me evidence of my targets'...instability. It was convincing. I felt I was performing a necessary service.”

Felix seemed to have shrunk into the sofa.

“Naive as I was, it eventually occurred to me that once I'd completed my final mission, I would be the only loose end of the entire Pollux debacle. At best, they'd keep me under lock and key, for study. At worst... I decided not to wait to find out.”

Felix put his glass down on the coffee table and looked Leon in the eye. “Have you come here to kill me, then?” he asked, thrusting his chin forward. It was a good act; only the faintest tremor in his voice gave him away.

“That depends,” said Leon. “Do you have any history of violence?”

Red blotches bloomed on Felix's face. “Do _I_...?” he demanded incredulously. “Do _I_ have a history of violence? _You're_ the monster here, not me! Talk about your God complexes! Who the hell do you think you are?” There was no sign of tremor now as his voice rose and his hands cut through the air. “ _I_ am an avowed pacifist! I've never hit anyone in my life! Do you know what violence is? It's a lack of imagination! People who resort to violence are idiots. They're...they're _uncreative!_ ” Judging by the finality with which it was uttered, this was the worst insult Felix could think of.

But he was by no means finished. “And you! You just admitted you killed your own clones—all of them! On what? The word of some military bureaucrat? Or do you think your own judgement's so infallible you can decide whether or not someone deserves to get murdered? That's utterly mad! You're absolutely barking, you do realize that?”

Leon felt his jaw tighten.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Felix with heavy sarcasm. “I forgot you're the _sane_ clone. I suppose you think you're nothing like the others.”

“I did,” Leon admitted. He looked down into his drink, unwilling to meet Felix's eyes. “I don't anymore.”

Felix leaned back into the satin upholstery. His attitude seemed to deflate a little. Leon watched a sunbeam catch the top of his sculpted hair and outline it like a hairdresser's halo. “How?” Felix asked, eyes searching his face. “How can you...?”

“Live with myself?” Leon shook his head. Was morality a weakness, a luxury, or a necessity? He wished he could be sure of the answer. “Recently I've been focused on staying alive and under the radar. That tends to keep the introspection to a minimum.”

“They're still after you? Do they know about me?”

“No and no, I hope. They think I'm dead, and I'm pretty sure they don't know you exist—yet. Go to Paul if you need protection; you can trust him. He was the one who confirmed my death to HQ. I wouldn't have been able to get away without him.”

Felix sat up straight. “Paul? You mean _Paul_ Paul? Big Dick Paul? He _knew_? That tight-lipped bastard!”

“Big Dick Paul”? What the hell? “If Dyad's collected information on your foster-sister, you're probably in one of their files. I don't know how cosy they are with the military right now, or if they know anything about Pollux. Hopefully Paul can run interference, but someone might be putting two and two together as we speak. You need to be careful, Felix. You represent a big, big problem to some people, and a goldmine to others. Either way, these people do not fuck around. Do you understand?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to go to ground again as soon as possible. The longer I stay in town, the more danger I put us both in.” If he was smart, he wouldn't stick around to say goodbye to Paul, either. The thought hurt more than he expected.

Felix was eyeing him thoughtfully. “I suppose I ought to get you a clone phone.”

Clone phone? “It's probably safer if I'm the one who initiates contact.”

“But you will stay in touch? I mean, we won't be having any heart-to-hearts, obviously, and if you're going to keep doing the homicidal GI Joe thing, frankly I don't want to know about it; but, well, we are sort of related, albeit in a deeply weird and slightly creepy way.”

Leon shrugged. “If you want.” He took the scribbled phone number Felix handed him, folded it, and put it carefully in an inner pocket. It was strangely comforting.

Felix saw him to the door like a good host. As Leon put on his gloves, Felix watched him from where he was leaning against the wall like a lounge singer, his spine a graceful curve. He said, “You don't believe that 'flaw in the design' crap, do you?”

“Now that I've met you? No, I don't.”

“Good,” said Felix. “'Cause it's bollocks.”

Leon smiled. “Yeah. Thanks, Felix.”

“Oh, well, you know,” said Felix with a wave of his hand. “Any time you feel like dropping in and blowing my world apart, feel free.”

 

***  


When a knock sounded on the door ten minutes later, Felix pulled it back expecting to see Leon again. Instead, it was Cosima, her red coat half-buttoned over some ethnic monstrosity, maroon tights, and an adorable pair of pumps.

“Hey, Felix,” she said, dreads swinging. Her smile fell as she took in his face. “Whoa, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“Worse,” said Felix. “Break out the good weed while I open a bottle of wine and ring Sarah, yeah? We need to have a family talk.”

“Wow, sounds heavy,” she said, stepping into the loft and shucking her coat.

“Darling,” he said as he slid the door shut behind her, “you have no idea.”

  



End file.
